The Casino Murder Case Read online

  Llewellyn nodded vaguely and looked around him with dazed eyes.

  “I—I can’t understand it,” he mumbled.

  “We’re here to do what we can,” Vance told him. “And we’ll want to have a talk with you a little later. In the meantime would you mind waiting elsewhere? We’ve a few things to look into first.”

  “I’ll wait in the drawing-room.” He went heavily to the door, and as he passed his mother he paused and gave her a searching, appealing look which she returned with a cold meaningless stare.

  When he had left the room Mrs. Llewellyn turned her eyes calculatingly toward Vance.

  “Lynn,” she said, with a twisted, mirthless smile, “has practically accused me of being responsible for the tragic events of this past night.”

  Vance nodded with understanding.

  “I regret that we inadvertently overheard some of the things he said to you. But you must not forget, madam, that he may not be quite himself this morning.”

  The woman appeared not to have heard what Vance had said.

  “Of course,” she explained, “Lynn does not actually believe the terrible intimations beneath his words. The poor boy is suffering horribly. It has all been a great shock to him. He is reaching out blindly for some explanation. And he has a vague fear that perhaps I am responsible. I wish I could help him,—he is really suffering.” Despite the deep concern indicated by her words, her voice had a harsh, artificial tone.

  Vance regarded her a moment. His eyelids drooped over his cold gray eyes, giving him a lackadaisical expression.

  “I quite understand your feelings,” he said. “But why should your son suspect you?”

  Mrs. Llewellyn hesitated before answering; then the muscles of her face stiffened as if with a sudden and distressing decision.

  “I may as well tell you frankly that I was strongly opposed to his marriage. I did not like the girl—she was not worthy of him. And perhaps I have been too outspoken in my remarks to him; I fear now I have not sufficiently restrained my feelings in that regard. But I was unable to dissemble in a matter so vital to my son’s happiness.” She compressed her lips and then went on. “He may have misconstrued my attitude. He may have taken my remarks even more seriously than they were intended—overestimated the actual strength of my emotions.”

  Vance nodded discreetly.

  “I see what you mean,” he murmured. Then he added, without taking his gaze from the woman: “You and your son are unusually close to each other.”

  “Yes.” She nodded with a somewhat abstracted glance. “He has always depended on me.”

  “A case of mother fixation, perhaps,” suggested Vance.

  “It might be that.” She looked down at the floor and, after a moment, said: “It would, of course, account for his fears and suspicions regarding me.”

  Vance moved toward the mantel.

  “Yes, that might be one explanation. But we sha’n’t go into the possibility just now. Later, perhaps. In the meantime—”

  The woman rose vigorously.

  “I shall be in my own room—if you care to see me again.” And she strode angrily to the door and closed it after her.

  Vance studied the tip of his cigarette in lazy meditation.

  “Now, what was the meanin’ of all those intimate details? She was not in the least worried about herself, and actually seemed pleased that we had surprised the hysterical Lynn in his jittery genuflexion. I wonder... Painful and perplexin’, Markham.” He raised his head and surveyed the room dreamily. “Let’s see if we can find anything new. Anything at all. The slightest suggestion. The whole background of this case is beclouded. No suggestion of a color scheme. Really, Markham, I don’t know anything. The mind is a total loss. Suspicious shadows, however...”

  He strolled to the dressing-table and looked over the array of cosmetics.

  “The usual items,” he murmured, opening the top drawer and peering in. “Yes—quite in keeping. Eye shadow, mascara, eyebrow pencil—all the accessories of vanity. And not used last night. Indicatin’, as I said, an unexpected and not a premeditated demise.” He closed the drawer and moved toward the mantel, pausing before a small hanging bookshelf. “All French novels of the cheaper variety. The lady had abominable liter’ry taste.” He tested the old-fashioned china clock on the mantel. “Duly wound—and keeping excellent time.” He leant over the grate. “Nothing,” he complained dolefully. “Not even a cigarette butt.” He moved on round the room, carefully observing each item of furniture and decoration, and finally came to a halt at the foot of the bed. “I fear there’s nothing to help us here, Markham.” He smoked despondently a moment, and then turned toward the rear of the room without enthusiasm. “The bathroom, once more,” he sighed. “A mere precaution...”

  He went into the bathroom and spent some time going over it and reinspecting the medicine cabinet. When he came back into the bedroom his eyes were troubled.

  “Deuced queer,” he muttered to no one in particular. Then he lifted his gaze to Markham. “I’d swear some one has been shifting some of those bottles around in the medicine cabinet since I looked at them last night.”

  Markham was unimpressed.

  “What makes you think that?” he asked impatiently. “And, even if it were so, what would be the significance?”

  “I can’t answer both of your questions,” Vance returned. “But last night I got a very definite picture of the—what shall I call it?—compositional outlines of the bottles and boxes and tubes in the cabinet—a certain balance of arrangement of the angles and intersecting planes such as one gets in a Picasso painting. And now the proportions and relationships of the lines and squares are not the same. There’s a slight distortion of last night’s values: it’s as if some stress had been obliterated or some linear form had been accentuated,—the picture has been touched up or modified in some way. But apparently nothing is missing from the cabinet—I’ve checked every item.” He drew deeply on his cigarette. “And yet there is some accent lacking or transposed—an added crayon mark or a small erasure somewhere.”

  “It sounds esoteric,” grumbled Markham.

  “I dare say,” Vance agreed. “Probably is. Anyway, I don’t at all like it. Disturbin’ to my æsthetic sensibilities.” He shrugged and went again to the head of the bed.

  He stood for some time gazing down thoughtfully at the night-table, with its ash-tray, telephone and silk-shaded electric lamp. Then he slowly pulled out the little drawer.

  “My word!” He suddenly reached into the drawer and took out a blue-steel revolver. “That wasn’t there last night, Markham,” he said. “Amazin’!” He inspected the revolver and, replacing it carefully exactly where he had found it, turned about.

  Markham was more animated now.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t there last night, Vance?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. No error of vision.”

  “Even so,” said Markham, with a look of baffled impatience, “what possible bearing can it have on all these poisonings?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Vance admitted placidly. “But nevertheless, it’s of academic interest... Suppose we go downstairs and have parlance with the unhappy Lynn.”

  Footnote

  * Swacker was Markham’s secretary.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Painful Interview

  (Sunday, October 16; 10.30 a.m.)

  WHEN WE ENTERED THE drawing-room Lynn Llewellyn was stretched out in a low comfortable chair, smoking a pipe. On seeing us he struggled to his feet with apparent effort and leaned heavily against the centre-table.

  “What do you make of it?” he asked in a husky voice, his bleary eyes moving from one to the other of us.

  “Nothing yet.” Vance scarcely looked at the man and walked toward the front window. “We were hopin’ you might assist us.”

  “Anything you want.” Llewellyn moved his arm vaguely in a gesture of docile compliance. “But I don’t see how I can help you. I don’t even know what happened t
o me last night. Guess I was winning too much.” His tone had become bitter, and there was a sarcastic sneer on his lips.

  “How much did you win?” asked Vance casually and without turning.

  “Over thirty thousand. My uncle told me this morning he had it cached in the safe for me.” The muscles in the man’s jaw tightened. “But I wanted to break his damned bank.”

  “By the by,”—Vance came back toward the centre of the room and sat down by the table—“did you note any peculiar taste in the whisky or the water you drank last night?”

  “No, I didn’t.” The answer came without hesitation. “I thought about that this morning—tried to recall—but there was nothing wrong as far as I could tell... I was pretty much excited at the time, though,” he added.

  “Your sister drank a glass of water in your mother’s room here last night,” Vance went on, “and she collapsed with the same symptoms you showed.”

  Lynn Llewellyn nodded.

  “I know. I can’t figure it out. It’s all a nightmare.”

  “Just that,” agreed Vance. Then, after a pause, he glanced up. “I say, Mr. Llewellyn, has it occurred to you that your wife might have committed suicide?”

  The man started sharply and, swinging round, glared at Vance with open-eyed astonishment.

  “Suicide? Why—no, no. She had no reason—” He broke off suddenly. “But you never can tell,” he resumed in a strained, repressed voice. “It may be, of course. I hadn’t thought of it... Do you really think it was suicide?”

  “We found a note to that effect,” Vance told him quietly.

  Llewellyn said nothing for a moment. He took a few unsteady steps forward; then he walked back and sank into the chair in which we had found him.

  “May I see it?” he asked at length.

  “We haven’t it here now.” Vance spoke in an offhand manner. “I’ll show it to you later. It was typewritten—addressed to you—and spoke of her unhappiness here, and of your uncle’s kindness to her. And she wished you the best of luck at roulette. Brief—to the point—and final. Neatly folded under the telephone.”

  Llewellyn did not move. He gazed straight ahead without comment or any facial indication of what he was thinking. Finally Vance spoke again.

  “Do you, by any chance, own a revolver, Mr. Llewellyn?” he asked.

  The man stiffened in his chair and looked at Vance with quick interrogation.

  “Yes, I own one... But I don’t see the point.”

  “And where do you generally keep it?”

  “In the drawer of the night-stand by the bed. We’ve had a couple of bad burglar scares.”

  “It wasn’t in the drawer last night.”

  “Naturally. The fact is, I had it with me.” Llewellyn was still studying Vance with a puzzled frown.

  “Do you always carry it with you when you go out?” Vance asked.

  “No—rarely. But I do take it with me, as a rule, when I go to the Casino.”

  “Why do you single out the Casino for this peculiar distinction?”

  Llewellyn paused before answering, and a look of smouldering animosity came into his eyes.

  “I never know what may happen to me there,” he said at length, between locked teeth. “There’s no love lost between my uncle and myself. He’d like to get my money, and I’d like to get his. To be quite truthful with you: I don’t trust him. And the events of last night may or may not justify my suspicions. At any rate, I have my theory as to what happened.”

  “We sha’n’t ask to hear it just now, Mr. Llewellyn,” Vance replied coldly. “I have my ideas too. No use confusin’ the issue with speculations... So you carried your revolver to the Casino last night and then replaced it in the night-table drawer this morning: is that correct?”

  “Yes! That’s exactly what I did.” Llewellyn spoke with a show of aggressiveness.

  Markham put a question.

  “You have a permit to carry a gun?”

  “Naturally.” Llewellyn sank back in his chair.

  Vance got up again and stood looking down at him.

  “What about Bloodgood?” he asked. “Is he another reason for your fears?”

  “I don’t trust him any more than I do Kinkaid—if that’s what you mean,” the man returned unhesitatingly. “He’s under Kinkaid’s thumb—he’d do anything he was told to do. He’s as cold as a fish, and he’s got plenty to win if he could stack his cards the way he wants to.”

  Vance nodded understandingly.

  “Yes—quite. I see your point. Your mother practically told us he wants to marry your sister.”

  “That’s right. And why not? It would be a good catch for him.”

  “Your mother further told us your sister has repeatedly refused his offers of marriage.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing.” There was an undertone of bitterness in his voice. “Her enthusiasm for art doesn’t go very deep. She’s just temporarily bored with life. She’ll get over it. And she’ll marry Bloodgood eventually. She likes him in her cold-blooded superficial way.” He paused and then added with a sneer: “A good combination they’ll make, those two.”

  “Illuminatin’ comments,” murmured Vance. “And young Doctor Kane?...”

  “Oh, he doesn’t count. He’s serious about Amelia, though, and he’ll always be her slave. He’s doomed for life to play Cayley Drummle to her Paula Tanqueray. She’d rather fancy it, too. Selfish as they come.”

  “A pathological household,” commented Vance.

  Llewellyn took no offense. He merely showed his teeth and said:

  “That’s just the word. Every one tangential to the norm. Like all old families with too much money and no object in life but to incubate hatred and hatch plots.”

  Vance looked at Llewellyn with vague, almost pathetic, curiosity.

  “Do you know anything about poisons?” he asked unexpectedly.

  The man chuckled unpleasantly: the question seemed to leave him entirely unimpressed.

  “No,” he said readily. “But there’s evidently some one else around here who knows a hell of a lot about poisons.”

  “There are several fairly comprehensive volumes on the subject in the little library yonder,” Vance remarked, with a casual wave of the hand.

  “What!” Llewellyn started up. “Books on poison—here?” His eyes glared at Vance for a moment as if in surprised horror. Then he sank back and fumbled with his pipe.

  “Does the fact astonish you?” Vance’s voice was particularly mild.

  “No, no; of course not,” Llewellyn answered almost inaudibly. “For the moment perhaps—it brought things pretty close to home. Then I remembered my father’s scientific interests... probably some of his old books...”

  A thoughtful frown had settled on Llewellyn’s forehead: his eyes had narrowed to intense speculation. A train of unpleasant suspicions seemed to be running through his mind, and he held himself almost rigid.

  Without appearing to do so, Vance watched him for several moments before speaking.

  “That will be all for the present, Mr. Llewellyn,” he said in polite dismissal. “You may go upstairs. If we need you further we’ll notify you. You’d better stay in today and rest. Sorry to have upset you by mentioning the treatises on toxicology.”

  The man had risen and was already at the door.

  “You didn’t upset me exactly,” he said, halting. “You see, Kane’s a doctor, and Bloodgood took a degree in chemistry at college, and Kinkaid wrote a whole chapter on Oriental poisons in one of his travel books—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand perfectly,” Vance interrupted with a slight show of impatience. “They wouldn’t have needed the aid of the books, of course. And if the books were used as source material for what happened yesterday, that might narrow the thing down to you and your mother and your sister. And you and your sister were both victims of the plot. So that leaves only your mother as the person who might have made use of the books... Something like that went through your mind—eh, what?”<
br />
  Llewellyn drew himself up aggressively.

  “No, nothing of the kind!” he protested vigorously.

  “My mistake,” Vance muttered, with a curious note of sympathy in his voice. “By the by, Mr. Llewellyn, I meant to ask you: did you, by any chance, go to your medicine cabinet for any purpose this morning?”

  The man shook his head thoughtfully.

  “No-o... I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Some one did.” Vance returned to his chair, and Llewellyn, with a shrug, left us.

  “What do you make of him, Vance?” Markham asked.

  “He’s sufferin’.” Vance sighed meditatively. “Full of morbid ideas. And worryin’ abominably over mama. Sad case...”

  “He said he had a theory about last night. Why didn’t you urge him to expound it to us?”

  “It would have been too painful, revealin’ only his state of mind. Yes, too painful. I’m burstin’ with sorrow, as it is. I cannot bear much more, Markham. I want to go far away. I want to bask in sunshine. I want to see Santa Claus. I want to eat some real English sole. I want to hear Beethoven’s C-sharp minor quartet...”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Post-Mortem Report

  (Sunday, October 16; 11.15 a.m.)

  SERGEANT HEATH APPEARED at the door.

  “The young doc’s just coming downstairs. Want to see him, sir?”

  Vance hesitated; then nodded.

  “Yes, ask him to come in here, Sergeant.”

  Heath disappeared and a moment later Doctor Kane entered the drawing-room. His face was drawn and haggard as if from insufficient rest, but the look of strain and apprehension had gone from his eyes. His manner was almost cheerful as he greeted us.

  “How is your patient this morning?” Vance asked him.

  “Practically normal, sir. I remained here a couple of hours after you gentlemen went last night, and Miss Llewellyn was resting quietly when I left. Naturally she feels weak this morning and is highly nervous; but her pulse and respiration and blood-pressure are normal.”